MQM-P petitions SC to expunge high court’s remarks

The Supreme Court on Thursday issued notices to the Sindh government and others on the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan’s (MQM-P) petition to expunge the Sindh High Court’s (SHC) remarks while deciding the convicts’ appeal in the Baldia factory fire case.

The MQM-P said that while deciding the convicts’ appeal in the Baldia factory fire case, the SHC made certain remarks with regard to the party’s involvement in violent activities. The party’s counsel Farogh Naseem said that the observation in the SHC’s judgment was irrelevant because the MQM-P was not a party in the case.

A three-member SC bench headed by Justice Mohammad Ali Mazhar said the court has not examined the trial court’s verdict or the evidence produced on the basis of which the SHC issued the relevant observation in the case.

The bench issued notices to the prosecutor general and others, and asked the petitioner’s counsel to file the relevant evidence and order of the trial court so that the SC can examine the content of the case.

It is pertinent to mention here that the SHC had dismissed two MQM activists’ appeals against their death sentences in the Baldia factory fire case. An anti-terrorism court had awarded Abdul Rehman, alias Bhola, and Zubair, alias Charya, the death sentence on arson, extortion and terrorism charges for causing 264 factory workers’ deaths.

The SHC, however, set aside the life sentences of factory employees and gatekeepers Shahrukh, Fazal Ahmed, Arshad Mehmood and Ali Mohammad, saying that the prosecution could not produce any evidence against them for committing the offences they had been charged with.

According to the prosecution, MQM leaders and activists torched the factory over the non-payment of Rs250 million in extortion. Main accused Rehman had admitted in a confessional statement that the Ali Enterprises garment factory in Baldia Town had been torched on former MQM Karachi Tanzeemi Committee (KTC) incharge Hammad Siddiqui’s instructions.

More than 260 factory workers had been burnt alive and many others had suffered injuries on September 11, 2012, when the factory had been set on fire. The judges had observed in the judgment that though the MQM is a legitimate political party with parliamentary seats and a large support bank in urban Sindh, certain elements within it, as most Karachi residents know, have had a propensity for violence since the party’s inception when so ordered by the party high command.

The judges said that one of the party’s fundraising methods was extortion, while target killing was also not off the table, as MQM activist Saulat Khan was found involved in the murder of the former head of the then Karachi Electric Supply Company, and others in founding party leader Dr Imran Farooq’s murder in London, showing that the party’s militant elements have a long reach.

The bench said that these two cases are well-documented and need no further elaboration, along with MQM supporters’ widespread disorder in Saddar after party founder Altaf Hussain’s provocative telephonic speech on August 22, 2016.

The court reprimanded police for its abject failure in thoroughly investigating the KTC’s other members who often met as a body at the MQM headquarters Nine Zero. Validating the prosecution witnesses’ belated statements, the bench said that the reason why the statements had been given so late was because of the MQM’s involvement in the incident.